St Kilda is set to enter the 2026 AFL Draft with two first-round picks following a productive Trade Period, welcoming young Lion Sam Marshall and a first-round draft selection, while farewelling ruck Rowan Marshall.

GM of Football, Lenny Hayes spoke to AFL Trade Radio on the following topics surrounding the club's list management and draft strategy...

📍 St Kilda’s activity in the Trade Period:

Lenny: We walk away with a pretty good draft hand and bring in a young player (Sam Marshall) who was a first-round draft pick two years ago and has been in a good system. All in all, we’re quite happy.

📍 St Kilda’s long-term list strategy:

Lenny: We’ve gone to the draft for the last five or six years and brought in some really good young players… we think a lot of our improvement will come from our young core.

But also, the experience we brought in last year, those four more mature players are going to be better having had 12 months in the system. We’ll be able to build that connection and synergy going forward, so we feel that’s where our improvement will come from, along with those two first-round draft picks we’ll bring in this year.

Our growth is going to come internally… the young guys we’ve brought in have played a fair bit of footy together now, and that’s been part of the strategy to invest in youth, get games into them together, and then progress up the ladder as we move forward.

📍 Rowan Marshall’s exit:

Lenny: From the start, we were pretty keen to get that first-round draft pick in, and that’s the way it landed, so we were happy.

Rowan’s been a great servant for our football club. He wanted to get to Geelong and in the end, we were happy to make that happen, but at the right price, which we think we got.

📍 St Kilda’s 2026 AFL Draft plans:

Lenny: We value this year’s draft, especially that first round. There’s some really good players around our picks that are going to help us moving forward.

I think it will be a combination of best available and specific list needs. There’s some good key position players early in the draft. There’s also some good midfielders and half-backers we think could get to us as well.

It’s pretty exciting for Saints fans, looking at that first round of the draft.

📍 St Kilda’s options at half-back in 2027:

Lenny: I think people forget Jack Sinclair missed the back half of the year because of that serious calf injury. He was the second ranked small defender in the competition.

We really liked what Bradley Hill did there in the last five or six weeks, and Tobie Travaglia is another one who we thought played some really good footy in the last month, he started to intercept the ball and looked a bit more comfortable at AFL level.